Loudon Wainwright III

With Wainwright's kids Rufus and Martha getting plenty of ink and his acting career doing better than ever, you'd think that this celebrated singer-songwriter would slow down a little. But no, Loudon's caustic, clever and sensitive songs are sharper than ever, and his crackerjack band is led by guitar whiz Bill Frisell.

Wainwright has managed to keep up his seasoned sarcasm on singer-songwriter records
whose tunefulness and effort levels varied widely. On this country-folk record, the
fifty-eight-year-old strikes a balance between unexpected elegance and verbosity as he
ponders the Bible Belt, downtown New York and the sad fate of Fred Rogers.

For a decade Wainwright has been keeping it real with songs about family trauma and songs about what a sh*t he is--themes sometimes addressed simultaneously, as in "Year," where he first meets his latest daughter on her first birthday. Once his political songs fell flat because he wasn't scared or angry enough. Now when he's a sh*t you wonder why you should care--which is kind of hip-hop, don't you think?--but Bush has him so scared and angry he makes up for it, with a dedicated posse of El Lay studio vets getting in their licks. "No Sure Way" mourns the WTC, "God's Country" renounces Nashville, and "Choppers" imagines a bombed Los Angeles devastated as logically and surreally as a bombed Baghdad. And "Choppers" is no more disturbing than "My Biggest Fan," which could inspire any singer-songwriter to do an emotional cost-benefit analysis on the touring life--and leave a 400-pound aficionado feeling flattered anyway. (Grade - A-)